I Am the Clay (11 page)

She thought: Now both will certainly die and this cave will be their grave. And I will die here too, but for me there will be no stones. The man wanted me to send the boy away and now they will lie here together. Somewhere there is great laughter among the spirits.

She felt too weary to be angry. She did not know what to do.

All that night she kept the fire burning and bathed alternately the faces of the boy and the old man. If there are spirits of kindness left anywhere in this war let them find this cave. Let them find these mountains
and this valley and this old woman who makes a promise of many offerings to any spirits who find this cave and heal the boy and the man. These words she said to herself again and again. On occasion as she moved back and forth from the fire to the boy and the man, murmuring the words aloud, there came from deep inside the cave the flutter of wings and the tiny movements of small hairy forms.

At dawn she left the cave and found the space between the boulders and barely managed to edge her way through. Between the boulders and the base of the mountain the air seemed colder than it did near the cave. The surface of the hole in the pond had iced over during the night and she chipped at it, using the stone left there by the boy. With his wooden tool she caught five fish. When she rose wearily to her feet she found herself besieged by the three dogs.

The boy had told her of the dogs.

She walked slowly toward them, speaking softly, and when one of them growled she raised one of the fish high and let them see it and then tossed it far away. The two large dogs barked and raced off after it but the little one remained in its place. She tossed it a fish, which it caught and began to eat. Then she returned to the cave.

She was trying to feed the boy when she heard a noise from the mouth of the cave and looked up and saw the little dog as a silhouette in the morning light. The boy, semi-conscious, saw the dog too and called out strange words the woman did not understand. She poured some of the soup into a small pot and left it at the mouth of the cave and the dog ate quickly and then sat on its haunches watching the woman. When
the woman went to put more brushwood on the fire the dog ambled over to the boy and sniffed him. She watched the dog sniffing the boy’s head and chest, its tail wagging. It barked once and the sound went ringing through the cave and there was a brief fluttering of wings and then silence. The dog lay down next to the boy outside the quilts. The woman sat by the fire exhausted and fell asleep.

When she woke the dog was still on the floor of the cave, its long nose nuzzled against the boy’s chest. She looked at the dog and shivered. Something. Some dim memory.

The man moaned. She helped him from the cart and supported him as he squatted outside. The sun shone bright on the snow. She gazed out at the mountains and the valley. No people. No soldiers. Where was the war? Had she and the man and the boy wandered from the earth into a world of spirits? If we are in a world of spirits they will either kill us all or help us all. Or are the spirits fighting among themselves over us? Do those who wish to help us need our help to succeed?

The man groaned. He could not walk without her help. There was little left of him but bones. She brought him into the cave and helped him onto the cart. If there are spirits who need help, how can I help them?

She remembered then once in her childhood watching the village sorceress tend to a neighbor, an old woman. This memory surprised her, because she could not recall ever having thought it before, and with a tremor of fear she found herself thinking it had been sent to her now by a spirit.

She took clay from the floor of the cave and put it into a pot and heated it dry and with a round stone ground it into a fine powder. She poured hot water over it and brought it to the old man and tried feeding it to him. He would not take it but this time she poured it into his mouth and held him as he choked and gagged, and some of it he spat out and some of it he kept down.

She then went to the boy and bathed his face and lifted his jacket and shirt to look again at the wound. The stench from it made her gag. But the dog, who had slunk away when the woman had come over to the boy, now reappeared and the woman smelled its heat and watched in surprise as it put its mouth to the boy’s chest and sent its smooth wet red tongue darting forward in a few brief tentative licks at the wound.

The boy suddenly opened his eyes and moaned and pushed at the dog’s head. The dog retreated but a moment later was back and its red tongue licked hungrily at the suppurating wound.

The boy lay very still, his eyes partially open and only the whites showing.

The woman looked at the jagged hot cleansed wound and covered the boy and spoke softly to the dog, who lay down beside the boy.

She squatted by the fire, dozing and dreaming. In one of her dreams she was sailing high into the air on her swing and then suddenly falling and a dog licked at her bleeding leg. She woke. It seemed to her she had been asleep only minutes but the sun was almost to the western mountains. She rose and ground clay and fed it in a soup to the man and then uncovered the boy’s wound, which was oozing pus again, and
watched as the dog licked it clean. She went to the pond and brought back three more fish, after feeding one to the two dogs. A second she threw to the small dog and with the remaining two she made another soup. Then she bathed the man’s face and fed him hot water and clay, and bathed the boy and fed him hot jellied soup, and once again let the dog cleanse the wound.

She slept that night on one side of the boy and the dog slept on the other side, on the floor beside the quilts, and all through her sleep it seemed to her she heard the sighs and flutters of the spirits of the cave.

The next day she did the same things she had done the day before; and again the following day.

On the morning of the fourth day she looked at the boy’s wound and saw the swelling was gone and it was clean. The boy lay cool and deep in sleep, the dog beside him. The man sat up in the cart and weakly demanded food. She fed him the jellied soup and afterward he lay back and slept. She thought fearfully: This is a place filled with the power of healing spirits. I will walk carefully and be silent.

In the afternoon she returned to the pond and after feeding the two dogs brought back three fish, one of which she gave to the little dog. She cooked a soup and offered it to the spirits of the cave and after a while fed it to the man and the boy and then ate of it herself.

The fevers were gone from both the old man and the boy but both were skeletal and could barely stand without the help of the woman. The boy lay on the ground beneath the quilts and hugged the dog to himself in his sleep and the man lay on the cart staring
at the valley and trying to remember how he had got to the cave.

“From where are the fish?” he asked the woman.

She told him. He glanced in surprise at the boy.

“And the dog?”

She told him that too.

“We cannot live in this cave forever,” he said.

“First get back your strength.”

“We need meat,” he said.

She did not respond.

“We need meat, woman,” he repeated.

She got up and walked out of the cave. He stared at her and lay back and closed his eyes.

The next morning two jet fighters flew over the valley and the boom of their supersonic speed reverberated through the mountains and stirred the creatures on the walls of the cave. They went fluttering and chittering through the air. The dog scampered off and the old man and the woman and the boy left the cave and sat in the sunlight.

After a while the woman got to her feet. “I will bring back some fish.”

“We need meat,” the old man said angrily.

She went off toward the boulders.

The old man sat with his face in the sunlight. He had not thought he would ever see sunlight again. The woman could not have done this without the boy. How strange the way the dog healed the boy’s wound. Once I heard something like that. A dog licked to health a
sword wound that would not heal. In the time of the Japanese. The carpenter told me that story.

The boy opened his eyes and, squinting in the sunlight, saw the old man looking at him. His heart raced and he turned quickly away. How he dislikes me. I see it. Why? The old man fidgeted with annoyance. There is something about this boy something and yet see how he helped the woman and knew to catch the fish and brought in the dog. Ah, my arms and legs. The sickness has made me into water I can hardly move I am like the woman after she bore the child and could not move and the wetnurse had to take him. We fed her light seaweed cooked in water and sesame oil, I remember. And later I bought some meat at great cost to feed her and bring her to her feet. See how the boy sits looking into the sun. His skin so thin I can see through it to his pulsing blood. Blue veins along his cheeks and on the side of his head. Smooth delicate papery skin. The son of scholars and poets. And landowners too, no doubt. The rich. No surprise the fiends from the North killed them all. They drink our blood, the landowners. But what does the boy know of such matters? He is a child. Still. Scholars and poets, and in the service of kings and emperors. If we are overtaken by those fiends from the North and they find us with this boy they will kill us all.

He heard a noise and saw the woman returning, her arms loaded with brushwood. She lay the brushwood down with care a few feet from the mouth of the cave.

“Is there fish?” the old man asked.

She shook her head and put snow into the pot and put the pot on the fire. Then she went back to the load
of brushwood near the mouth of the cave and the boy saw her lift out of the wood the limp body of the little dog. She squatted over the dog with her back to the old man and the boy.

After a while the boy looked away from the woman and stared across the white valley at the afternoon sky.

The old man watched the woman and listened to the silence. This is a world filled with spirits. Is this boy, then, a child of spirits, that he saves my life again and again? Is there good magic in this boy?

The woman made a soup and offered it to the spirits of the cave. Then she set it before the old man and the boy. The old man saw the meat in the soup and had some trouble holding it down. The boy ate slowly and silently. When they were done the woman ate. Spirit of Mother, she kept saying to herself. Spirit of Grandfather.

They slept together that night on the earth of the cave, beneath the quilts and the sleeping bag, the boy between the old man and the woman.

The next day the boy felt strong enough to return to the pond, where he speared four fish. When he started back to the boulders, with the living fish in his hands, he saw the two large dogs blocking his way.

He spoke softly to the dogs. They stood very still, watching him. An offering, he murmured, to the spirit of life. Grandfather taught me that. An offering of thanks. He placed two of the fish in front of the dogs and returned to the cave.

The woman lay awake part of that night and listened to the fluttering among the spirits of the cave.
There seemed a restlessness to their movements. Furry wings beat the air, bodies hurtled through the darkness. They are telling us we have been here long enough. Even spirits of kindness grow impatient with men. Also there is danger in becoming too familiar with spirits. And what more can the boy do for us here?

Two days later, on a cold gray morning, they left the cave.

As they went along the valley the war returned to them. On occasion they came upon the remains of bodies alongside the cart path. At one point they stumbled upon a graveyard of rusted jeeps and tanks where a battle had once been fought. They were journeying south, deeper into the valley, and thought to take the path through the mountains and go in search of the refugee camp. A bitter north wind scoured the valley. They took turns at the shafts of the cart.

For a time in the afternoon the old man and the boy pulled together on the shafts of the cart and the woman pushed from behind. Icy winds, dense and crystalline, scratched their eyes. The sun lit up the summits of the mountains and sharply angled rays ran across the steep ridges, breaking the valley into a fierce pattern of light and dark. They were warmed by the sun as they walked in it and chilled by the shadows. Walking in the sunlight and treading upon his shadow, the boy saw on the snow in front of him the prints of boots and rubber shoes. Others had passed through this part of the valley and packed down the snow on the cart path. When? In the nights?